


War Stories

by Sholio



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Backstory, Banter, Case Fic, Developing Friendships, Gen, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-06
Updated: 2017-06-06
Packaged: 2018-10-23 20:11:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10726368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: In 1944, on an SSR mission in the Pacific, Peggy briefly meets a young Lieutenant Thompson. Neither of them know they'll meet again, years later, at the New York SSR.





	War Stories

**Author's Note:**

  * For [loverofstories](https://archiveofourown.org/users/loverofstories/gifts).



> Many thanks to my beta sheron for helpful suggestions and encouragement!

**1944**

It was afternoon when the cargo transport landed, though as far as Peggy was concerned, it might as well have been the middle of the night. She'd been traveling for two days straight, hopscotching halfway around the world. She'd completely lost track of what day it was, whether she'd crossed the International Date Line and in which direction, even what _time_ of day it was, and when the door opened onto brilliant sunshine, she had to squint against it as her body attempted to convince her it was not supposed to be this bright in the middle of the night.

"Welcome to the Pacific, Carter," Colonel Phillips grunted, unbuckling himself from his jump seat in the plane's cargo hold. 

They were crammed in with crates and bales of supplies, and Peggy had to clamber over and around the cargo to get to the door in the side of the plane. Phillips offered her a hand through the door onto the rickety-looking flight of steps leading down to the beach. He looked like he had no particular expectation that she'd take it, and he was right, but she did muster up a tired smile as she shouldered her bag and made her way down the steps, holding her hair with her free hand against the breeze off the ocean.

The plane had landed right on the beach. When Peggy turned and looked out to sea, it was like something out of a picture postcard, turquoise-blue water and a green headland, so vivid it looked as if it had been painted.

The picture was perfect except for a squadron of P-38s buzzing in low overhead, and when Peggy turned to follow their flight with her eyes, the picture postcard gave way to harsh reality: against the unreal green of the jungle on the island's interior, a scattered line of tents, tin shacks, and metal-covered Quonset huts gleaming in the brutal sun. The ground between them was churned to mud. Men's voices called to each other, Jeeps jolted between the tents, and a handful of other aircraft were parked on a wider landing strip at the far end of the tents that had been hacked out of the jungle.

Not fifty yards down the beach from the nose of their plane, a group of shirtless servicemen were playing some sort of vigorous, chaotic ball game over a net made from a stretched section of camouflage netting. From the look of things, they were so used to aircraft taking off and landing on the beach that they hadn't even bothered to look up, let alone stop their game.

The newcomers' arrival had been noted by some, at least. As the transport's tired crew began unloading bales of supplies, a truck pulled up beside the plane's landing gear, with a Jeep right behind it. The man who climbed out was wearing a major's stripes and a U.S. uniform.

"Colonel." He saluted sharply; Phillips returned a careless salute that was more like a wave. "And, uh, ma'am."

Peggy saluted him; her rank in the SOE was technically Captain. Not that anyone paid much attention to it.

Indeed, after an appreciative look that had nothing to do with her uniform and everything to do with what was in it, the major's attention returned to Phillips. "How was your flight, sir?"

"Long," Phillips groused. "You plan to stand around here jawing all day in the sun, Warwick, or get somewhere cool and get down to business?"

"Yes, of course --"

A cheer went up from the shirtless ballplayers as someone scored a point. The major looked over, took in the scene, and blushed right up to his hairline, an impressive feat considering his ruddy sunburn. "Sorry, sir. The young lady shouldn't have to -- That is to say, it's all men here except for a few Navy nurses. No one was thinking. I'll set them straight."

"Quite all right, Major," Peggy put in. "They have every right to enjoy their off time. I'm not bothered by it."

Major Warwick ignored her. Obviously flustered by a higher-ranking officer catching his men in an unprofessional moment, he raised his voice and bellowed, "Did you slackers notice there's work to be done over here, or were you planning to goof around all day? And get your shirts on!"

The ball game broke up; the players scrambled to brush sand off their shirts and hurried over to help unload the plane. Peggy received a number of curious glances and grins -- something she was more than used to by now, as one of the only women (if not the only one) in most of the places she went. However, the men were starting to trip over each other in their efforts to unload as close to Peggy's immediate vicinity as possible.

"Lieutenant Thompson!" Warwick snapped at a blond man who was hastily tucking in his shirt. "Drive this lady up to base while the Colonel and I talk business. She can stay in Dolly's tent."

This order was greeted with jealous looks and a few wolf whistles from Thompson's friends, in recognition of what they clearly considered a plum assignment. Peggy was much less pleased by being sidelined. She started to open her mouth, but Phillips gave the smallest headshake, and she desisted. 

You had to pick your battles, she'd learned. She trusted that Phillips would tell her what he felt she needed to know later. It would have made her job so much easier if so many of the officer's clubs and messes where important strategic conversations happened weren't (informally, if not officially) off limits to her.

Meanwhile, maybe she could find out something interesting about the potential HYDRA activities they were investigating from talking to the men on base. Sometimes men spoke more freely around women. It was one of the things that made her an effective agent.

She couldn't tell if Thompson was going to be a good source of information or not. He was a couple of years older than her -- somewhere in his mid twenties -- with blond good looks that, from the way he was grinning at her, no doubt had a history of dropping knickers in less susceptible individuals. He reached for her bag. "Here, ma'am, let me take that for you."

"I've got it, thank you." Peggy tossed it into the back of the Jeep and climbed in.

Thompson raised his eyebrows, shrugged, and got into the driver's seat. He pulled away with a flourish and a rooster tail of sand which prompted the major to shout after him, "That's U.S. government property, Lieutenant! Break it and you bought it!"

"There's no need to show off for my benefit, Lieutenant," Peggy told him. "I'm only here for a couple of days."

Thompson laughed. "Still doesn't mean you can't have fun while you're here." Driving one-handed as he jolted off the beach and into the muddy streets between the tents, he pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and offered her one. Peggy shook her head. Thompson shook one out of the pack and clamped it in his teeth. "What'd you say your name was? You're English, right?"

"Agent Carter, British Intelligence," Peggy said.

"What, really? British g-men get to work with gals? Guess I enlisted in the wrong country's service."

Maybe it was just that she was punch-drunk from weariness, but she couldn't help smiling at his transparent flirting. There were crescents of sunburn on his cheekbones and blue shadows under his eyes -- the war was driving him hard, as it was all of them -- but his irrepressible energy was contagious. So many of the soldiers she'd met were like that, burning bright as torches, as if in compensation for the chance they might be snuffed out tomorrow. She didn't have the heart to tell him that she wasn't in need of company. Steve was in Europe, an entire world away, but Peggy's next dance was spoken for from here to the end of the war and beyond.

"But c'mon, your first name can't be Agent. If it is, my condolences." He planted a hand over his heart while veering around an annoyed-looking pair of soldiers. "Call me Jack, by the way. Tell me your name isn't Agent."

"No, it's Margaret."

"Really? That's a mouthful. How about Marge instead?"

"I prefer Peggy."

"Peggy sounds like my spinster aunt."

"And Marge doesn't?" she inquired, mildly annoyed. One of her aunts used to call her Meg; the rest of the family had called her Peggy ever since she could remember.

"I dunno, it suits you." He skidded to a halt in front of a gate in a tall fence made from what appeared to be sections of tin roofing. "This is the distaff wing here. Nursetown. No boys allowed."

"There's a fence?" Peggy said, surprised.

"Yeah, the nurses are locked down pretty tight. There's a curfew and everything."

Hmmm. This was going to make information-gathering more difficult. Her general experience in Europe was that women weren't cordoned off as strictly -- but there were more of them around, especially since the troops in the European theatre of the war dealt more closely with the local population than appeared to be the case here. 

"So it sounds like you're rooming with Dolly and Gladys," Thompson went on. "Dolly's on leave with her fiancé right now, lucky fella, so you'll get her cot. You'll want tent 2."

"You appear to know the women's quarters rather well, given that you aren't allowed inside."

Thompson winked. "Oh, there are always ways."

Oh yes, first-class charmer here. She was going to have to keep an eye on this one. Still ... there were always advantages to dealing with that sort of person, however delicately she would need to handle the situation so as not to lead him on _too_ much. And he was an officer, which was better yet. As much as she wanted to collapse and take a nap, even in this sticky heat, she couldn't let an opportunity for information-gathering get away. "I don't suppose I have to go there immediately, do I? You haven't shown me around properly. I need to know where to find the mess hall and such items."

Her biggest worry about taking advantage of Lieutenant "call me Jack" Thompson as an information source and escort was that she'd find it impossible to extricate herself from him later, but Phillips saved her, coming to retrieve her from the mess before things could get awkward. Thompson bowed out gracefully with a grin, and Phillips took her the back way, behind the tents, through humid dusk filled with the sound of insects, to a walled tent that must have been hastily cleared out for his use. A kerosene lamp burned on the desk; mosquito netting was draped about a plain cot with a trunk at its foot. Even high-ranking officers didn't rate especially sumptuous quarters in a war zone.

"Teasing the local boys, Carter?"

"Gathering information, sir."

"And did you find any?"

"Well," she sighed, "I can tell you a great deal of local gossip, and not much else. If you need to know who's sneaking out at night into whose tent, who's supplying the camp with bootleg liquor, or a precise reckoning of recent heroism under fire, particularly any such incidents involving Lieutenant Thompson, I can give you a detailed account. Other than that, not much, I'm afraid."

There was a bright glint in Phillips' eye that let her know his day had been more fruitful than hers. "I'm gonna assume, then, that what I'm about to tell you hasn't made it into general base gossip yet. That's something, anyway."

A recon flight had retrieved what was believed to be some sort of Hydra weapon from the wreckage of a crashed Japanese bomber. Major Warwick had described it as fist-sized and octagonal, with a seam around the middle that glowed blue.

"So Hydra is dealing with the Japanese as well," Peggy murmured.

"Or the Germans are passing Hydra weapons to them. Hard to say."

Warwick had immediately clamped down security on it. He'd send word up the chain of command, which was how Phillips and the SSR had gotten involved.

But between the time they'd called Phillips and now, the item had gone missing.

"The recon crew are the most likely culprits, but Warwick doesn't think so," Phillips said. "He's got his eye on a Sergeant Leary."

"I've heard that name," Peggy said. "If you mean Sergeant John Leary? Though I believe his friends call him 'Bugs' for some reason."

Phillips made a "go on" gesture.

"Well, according to Lieutenant Thompson, Leary is courting a nurse named Alice, who is also stringing along one of the bomber pilots on the side." Peggy grimaced. "But more importantly for our purposes, he's the go-to man in camp if one needs items that can't be obtained through regular channels. From spare cigarettes to fresh fruit, Sergeant Leary is the one to talk to. Or so I'm told."

"Makes a certain kind of sense," Phillips sighed. "I guess he found out about the item and wants to see what kind of buyers he can find for it. Warwick has already tossed the entire camp twice -- not singling out Leary, just doing a general contraband check."

"With extra attention to Leary's quarters, I'm sure."

"Does a bear crap in the woods? Which is exactly what he found, by the way. Jack and ... crap. If Leary does have it, he's not keeping it in his tent."

Peggy frowned thoughtfully. "Did they search the women's quarters?"

Phillips raised his eyebrows. "You think one of the girls did it?"

"No -- well, it's certainly possible, but I would say a very likely option is that Leary has his young lady Alice hiding it for him. He may have either given it to her or hidden it in her tent himself. I've been given to understand that it's not uncommon for the men to find their way to the wrong side of the fence."

Phillips grunted. "I'm not gonna order Warwick to sweep the women's quarters on your say-so, Carter."

"No need," Peggy told him archly. "I'll be in the women's district all night, won't I? I'm entirely capable of searching Alice's tent myself."

***

The first thing she found upon ducking inside her assigned tent, however, was her new roommate stripping for bed. Gladys was an experienced nurse in her thirties with brassy curls, which were drooping (like the rest of her) after twenty hours on her feet, tending to wounded soldiers. She and Peggy exchanged polite introductions, and Gladys flopped on her cot inside the draped mosquito netting. Fat moths fluttered around the lantern beside her bed, shielded with a uniform jacket to hide the light from prying eyes, since they were supposed to be after lights-out.

"Hope it won't keep you up if I read, Peg. I'm so tired it feels like my eyes are buzzing worse'n these dratted moths, but I can't sleep a wink if I don't let my brain unwind a little bit first."

"Oh no, it's quite all right. I've just flown in from Stateside, and Europe before that. I could sleep through anything."

"You sure did come a long way," Gladys said, wide-eyed. "I never went anywhere further away than Grand Rapids before the war."

"Now look at you," Peggy said with a smile. "Out here saving lives."

The two women shared a smile that was wry with commiseration, and Gladys retrieved a dog-eared paperback from a trunk beside the cot. "You ever read Agatha Christie, Peg? She's really swell."

The last thing Peggy wanted to do was chat about Agatha Christie. She was hoping Gladys would fall asleep quickly so Peggy could slip out without drawing notice. However, there was always something to be said for willing sources of information, so she asked Gladys about life in the camp, and in particular, the other women in it.

Soon she had a fair idea of which tent in the women's enclosure belonged to whom (filing Alice's away with special attention). "And is it common," she asked, "for men to sneak into the women's quarters after curfew? I'd hardly feel safe if that was the case."

"Who told you that?"

"Lieutenant Thompson."

"Oh, _him."_ Gladys grinned with an elaborate roll of her eyes. "It's always gotta be bigger, higher, or longer with that one -- if you know what I mean. Take everything he tells you with a grain of salt. Or at least figure it's half the size he says it is, or the mission was half as successful and twelve times as dull."

"He's a liar?" Peggy inquired. She'd already gotten a read on him as something of a braggart, but now she revised her odds of the night's success downward somewhat.

"Oh, it's more that he likes to impress people. And you're just the type he'd want to impress." Peggy's eyebrows must have gone up, because Gladys clarified, "New gal on the island and all that. 'Course, good luck finding any young man who hasn't stretched the truth a time or two to make himself look better in front of his friends."

"Hmm. Well, I shall bear that in mind in my future dealings with the lieutenant."

"An' to give you an answer, it's mostly regular beaus sneaking in after curfew, you know, those girls that have a regular fella. So you got nothing to worry about, unless they're so drunk they stumble into the wrong tent."

"I feel safer already," Peggy said wryly, as she stretched out atop her cot. Darkness had fallen hours ago, but it was still so hot that she felt sticky all over. However, she was tired enough that she didn't think it would impair her ability to sleep. "I'm sorry to be poor company --"

"Oh no worries, look at me running at the mouth, keeping you up. I'm just gonna read one more chapter and try to figure out who done it." She waved the book at Peggy. "You can read this when I'm done, as long as you give it to some other gal when you're done. We make sure to pass 'em around."

"The offer is most appreciated," Peggy said -- wondering who in the world relished reading murder mysteries in the middle of a war zone -- and yawned in a somewhat exaggerated way as she rolled over.

Whether the Hydra device was in Alice's tent or not, she could catch a spot of much-needed sleep while Gladys read her book. Peggy had always possessed a talent for waking herself up at a particular time, so she firmly told her inner clock to rouse her in two hours, and sank instantly into sleep.

***

It was not her inner alarm clock that woke her, but a cacophony of noise: shouting, low engines roaring overhead, and the eardrum-rattling thump of shelling.

Peggy jolted awake, reaching instinctively for the service weapon she'd tucked under her pillow. She sat up, only to become instantly entangled in her mosquito netting. The tent alternated between tomb-dark, then dimly illuminated by reddish strobes of light filtering through the tent walls as muffled explosions shook the ground.

There was a crash from Gladys's side of the tent, and a torch snapped on, illuminating her face as she pushed back her mosquito bar. "Japanese bombing run," she said, her voice tense but not panicked. "Go, go. We need to get to the hospital."

"I ... appear to be having a problem," Peggy admitted, struggling with her netting.

"Got me too, in the beginning." Gladys helped her out. There was no time to look for boots. Peggy had fallen asleep in her clothing; Gladys was wearing a loose pair of men's shorts to sleep in, an untucked shirt over the top. They stumbled out into the churned mud between the tents.

The night was bright, lit by artillery and the bombers diving overhead, and the space between the tents bustled with half-clad women -- and a couple of very surprised-looking, half-clad men -- running for their duty stations. A sudden roar of engines filled the night, and Gladys grinned fiercely, tugging at Peggy's hand. "They're scrambling the P-38s. That'll show them Japs for sure. Come on, Peg."

Peggy stumbled along with Gladys, her bare feet squishing in the mud, the Webley pistol a cold weight shoved down the back of her skirt's waistband beneath her jacket. The tents would be empty, she thought. It was a perfect time to search -- and with that, she twisted her hand out of Gladys's well-intentioned grip. "You go!" she told her new friend, giving her a push. "There's something I need to get. May I have your torch?"

"Ain't nothing worth going back for, Peg!" But Gladys's sense of duty overcame her urge to look out for the newcomer. She shoved the torch into Peggy's hands and fled toward her assigned station.

Peggy ran back along the row of tents. There was no one in sight now; the rush of off-duty personnel, caught flat-footed by the raid, had flooded into the streets and then vanished to their duty stations with commendable speed. There were no stragglers in sight, only an apocalyptic stillness lit in flashes. 

A bomber roared overhead, so low that Peggy could see every detail of its landing gear. At any moment, a bomb might land on the women's tents. All the more reason to finish her mission in a hurry; there was no telling what an explosion might do to the Hydra device, whatever it was. They could set off a chain reaction that would obliterate the entire island, killing hundreds or thousands of people.

Gladys had told her Alice's tent was #8. Peggy ducked inside and found herself blind. She let the tent flap fall shut behind her and snapped on the torch.

She tried not to think about the possibility of bombs. If one happened to strike, she hopefully would never know. 

Alice's tent was like Gladys and Dolly's, two cots with a privacy curtain down the middle -- pulled back, as Gladys and Dolly had theirs -- and various personal effects scattered on either side. Peggy had no idea which side was Alice's, so she began tossing the tent with total disregard for delicacy or finesse. She tipped over the cots, shook the pillows, opened the women's trunks and pulled out handfuls of underwear and fashion magazines.

Nothing. Peggy stood in the middle of the mess, staring wildly around her. Either the bombing raid would end and she'd be caught here, or a bomb would drop on her and end her search -- either way, she had no time, and yet, she was positive that Leary had given the Hydra device to his sweetheart. He _must_ have.

But maybe she was wrong. Maybe he'd hidden it in the jungle, or on the beach somewhere --

Wait. She hadn't checked the floor yet.

The floor of the tent was covered with canvas to keep out tropical pests. Peggy ripped it up and instantly found what she was looking for: an obvious patch of disturbed earth. She pawed it away and discovered a dent-topped biscuit tin. She opened it upon a piece of night itself.

No wonder the Hydra device had captured Leary's interest, and perhaps Alice's as well. Peggy stared at it. From Phillips's description, she had imagined something odd-looking, but not nearly this unearthly. It was a black so matte that it looked like a hole in the fabric of reality. She had to probe it with a fingertip to make sure it was really there. A fine blue-glowing line circled the middle of the object, somehow managing to illuminate nothing.

"If only you fools could have turned your considerable talents to something other than overthrowing the free world," Peggy murmured.

She looked up as an engine's roar rattled the tent. For an instant, it sounded like one of the planes was about to land right on top of her, and then a tremendous _Whump!_ , far too close for comfort, made her stagger.

She had to get out of here. The biscuit tin was too big for any of her pockets, but she found a leather canteen in the mess, slashed open the side with her knife, and stuffed the tin inside. She fastened up the flap with a hairpin. It would never pass close inspection, but in darkness and confusion no one would be paying attention.

Peggy slung the strap over her shoulder. Stumbling over the mess she'd made of Alice's tent, she made her way to the front of the tent, lifted the flap, and peeked out.

The night was luridly lit by flames. By now Peggy had seen so much that it took a lot to impress her, but her mouth dropped open at the sight of a plane -- she didn't know if it was theirs or the enemy's -- engulfed in flames not fifty yards away. That last noise had been a crash, not a bomb. It had knocked down a whole row of tents. One of the wings was cocked up at an angle, framed against the conflagration.

The heat was withering, but she still started toward it, instinctively driven to see if any survivors could be pulled from the wreckage.

"Hey! You!"

She turned the other way and nearly ran headlong into someone who turned out to be Lieutenant Thompson, in his undershirt and carrying a carbine rifle.

"What in the hell?" he snapped. "Are you a complete idiot? Get to one of the bunkers!"

There was no sign of playful flirtation now; he looked equal parts angry and scared. "There could be someone in there," Peggy snapped as he tried to physically hustle her away, too distracted to play a role herself.

"Yes, and there are men to deal with that. God save me from women in a combat zone!" He gripped her arm and forced her to face him. The flames painted his face in black and gold; there was a streak of mud or blood across his cheek. "You can't run around out here. We've got enemy soldiers in camp; no one knows how many. Now let me get you the hell to a safe place."

Peggy allowed him to pull her away from the burning plane, gripping the canteen bouncing at her side. Enemy in camp? She had assumed getting caught in the bombing raid was simple bad luck on her part. Now a worse thought occurred to her: what if the raid was mere cover for an attempt to recover the Hydra item, whatever it was?

The item she was carrying.

_In which case I'd best hope they haven't a way to track it, or I'm in a great deal of trouble._

She needed to get it to Colonel Phillips, wherever _he_ was.

"Hey," Thompson snapped. "Stop woolgathering and --"

The enemy soldier, his face blacked with mud, came out of nowhere in the dark. Peggy was already beginning to duck when Thompson gripped her uniform shirt and yanked her down, throwing her off balance and sending her to one knee on the trampled, muddy ground. From this awkward perspective, she could see what he could not: another soldier behind the toppled tin remains of the fence.

Thompson fired at the one who had first startled them, and the man went down with a choked cry. The other was taking aim at Thompson's head. He started to turn, but not fast enough.

Crouched behind Thompson, Peggy drew her Walther and shot him without thinking -- without allowing herself to think. The enemy went down in a single shot. Thompson looked around quickly, mainly at the roofs of the nearest permanent structures. Looking for a sniper, his first guess about who had taken out the enemy soldier.

Peggy had to smile to herself, holding the Walther low at her side as she struggled to her feet. It was good camouflage, sometimes, not to be seen.

Anyway, the important thing now was to shake off Thompson and find Phillips with her prize.

"I know where to go from here, Lieutenant," she told him. "Your help was most appreciated."

And then she was off into the chaos of the camp, seeking Phillips, before he could say anything in return.

It was the last she saw of him; she and Phillips and one extremely unhappy Sergeant John Leary were gone under the cover of darkness in the aftermath of the battle, taking off with a flight medivacing out badly wounded soldiers. 

She didn't actually think of him again after that until she saw him in New York, years later.

***

* * *

**1946**

It took Peggy a little while, when she started working for the SSR in New York, to realize that _Agent_ Thompson was the same Lieutenant Thompson she'd met during the war. She had met a lot of people in the war, and he'd changed a great deal. But so had she.

She wasn't entirely sure he remembered _her_ until about a month or so into her time at the SSR's New York office. Most of the duty agents had just come in from a successful bust, buoyed up with their success. Peggy grimly turned her attention to her typing. She would prove herself. She would make them see beyond the skirt and lipstick.

A stack of files landed on the edge of her desk. "Cheer up, Marge," Agent Thompson remarked. "The problem, you see, is the SSR needs agents who know how to run _away_ from a fire, not into the middle of it."

Peggy looked up sharply. Strange how memory worked: for an instant she was back there, in the firelight and the mud, with the stink of burning diesel and charred flesh in her nostrils. She saw no sign, in Thompson's casual grin, that the memories affected him at all.

"And is that how the SSR trains its agents these days? To run away?"

"Hey, I'm just saying, stick to what you're good at, kid." Thompson patted the stack of files. "No shame in it. One thing you learn in war, everybody's got a part to play."

"That's what you learned in the war, is it?"

"As a leader of _men."_ He put a casual stress on the last word, stuck his hands in his pockets, and sauntered away.

Peggy watched him go, her lips pressed to a thin line. She'd _liked_ Lieutenant Thompson, damn it, for all the rational side of her telling her to be careful of him. Youthful boasts aside, she'd been entertained by his playful flirting and cocky cheer.

He still had those qualities, but it was less earnest and more ... calculated, perhaps, as if he looked at the world around him, even the war itself, only in terms of what he could get out of it. Maybe what bothered her most was that for her, for Daniel, for so many people the war had torn everything apart, but for Thompson it was only a stepping stone to bigger things. He'd waltzed through the mud and hell of the Pacific, and come out smelling like roses.

Or maybe the problem was only that she was no longer young and playful enough herself to find shallow, handsome men charming anymore.

_I'm not who I used to be, either._

She buried herself in her work, and ruthlessly crushed her memories of the war. She wasn't as successful at it as she would have liked; she went home early that day.

***

Two weeks after the Stark case wrapped up, Peggy was working late, one of the few agents left in the office. Suddenly her new boss appeared out of nowhere, planted his hip on the edge of her desk, and said in an accusing tone, _"You."_

"Me, Chief Thompson?" she inquired, looking up at him.

Jack pointed a finger at her. His mouth opened and closed. Peggy merely stared back at him until he said, finally, "You shot that guy!"

"What?" Peggy asked. That wasn't where she had expected this conversation to go. "What -- who ... when?"

"During the war. On Palau. You shot that Japanese soldier."

Oh. That. "The one who was going to put a bullet in your head?" she inquired, smiling sweetly at him.

Jack lowered his hand and gripped the edge of the desk. He stared at her, and then grinned slowly and shook his head. "I should've guessed -- after Belarus. It just took awhile to put things together. You sneaky little _devil."_ His smile faded, replaced by an intent, agent-on-a-mission look. "So why were you in the South Pacific in the first place, anyway, Agent Carter of British Intelligence?"

She may as well just tell him, or she'd never hear the end of it. Besides, now he had the clearance he didn't have then. "Looking for a Hydra device in your camp. I still don't know what it did. Possibly some sort of bomb."

Jack's eyebrows shot up. "Really? Did you find it?"

Peggy couldn't help smiling. "I had it on me when you found me in the nurses' quarters."

Jack leaned back; his eyes went narrow as if he suspected a trap. "You're joking."

"Not at all. I was searching the nurses' tents during the commotion. I'd hidden it in the canteen I was carrying. I expect it may well be downstairs in the SSR's lockup right now."

Jack gave her a very long look and repeated at last, in gravely impressed tones, "You -- sneaky -- little -- devil."

"Thank you." She couldn't help twisting the knife: "Fortunate that you showed up after I found it rather than before."

"What were you going to do, cold-cock me and leave me trussed up in a flaming tent?"

Well, that was a point. It wouldn't do to have left him helpless on a battlefield, no matter how much he was interfering with her ability to do her job. "I suppose I would have thought of something."

She could see it sink in, and Jack gave a theatrical shudder. "Okay, I'm just gonna count myself lucky that I never had to find out what your Plan B would've been."

Perhaps it was time to give him the bit of credit he was due. "In any case, you did tell me about Leary and his girlfriend, so it's you I have to thank for finding the item's hiding place."

"Wha -- _That's_ where ol' Bugs Leary got off to?" Jack snorted. "I always thought he got shanghai'd by the MPs for sending someone with officer's stripes to the med tent with one of his jungle-juice-cut-with-rubbing-alcohol cocktails."

"Dear God, did he do that?"

"Only once that I heard of. Leary's uncle was a bootlegger during Prohibition, and I guess he learned a few tricks of the trade. No, really, he was a Hydra spy?"

"Not a spy," Peggy demurred. "Merely an opportunist who chose the wrong opportunity."

"Wait a minute, were those Japanese soldiers running around camp looking for you?"

"I must have made quite an impression, if you remember the entire incident so vividly."

"Don't flatter yourself, Carter. You might think we got a midnight bombing raid every day and twice on Tuesday, but you'd be surprised how nearly getting your base camp flattened around you sticks in the memory. I hardly remember _you,_ honestly."

"Mmm-hmm," she responded.

"Mainly I was concerned with trying not to die. In which," he added, turning away to get his hat down off the rack, "you apparently figured somewhat. Don't work too late."

"Good night, Jack." Peggy rolled a fresh form into the typewriter.

She had expected him to leave, but she was vaguely aware, out of the corner of her eye, that he was still lingering around the coat rack, and finally hung his hat back up and vanished into his office. Some last errand he'd just remembered, probably -- but a minute later, he plunked himself down on the edge of her desk again. Peggy looked up, mildly annoyed: she was _never_ going to finish these forms at this rate. "Yes, what now?" she began, and then noticed he was holding a bottle of Scotch and two glasses.

"Dooley's best," Jack remarked, setting the glasses on the edge of her desk and pouring a couple fingers of whisky into each. "I found a whole stash in the bottom drawer of his desk, little while back. Didn't seem right," he added quietly, "to drink it all myself."

"Not if you plan to work tomorrow, no." She accepted the glass he handed her, resigning herself to the fact that she apparently wasn't going to get this surveillance request finished anytime soon. 

"Yeah, well, last time you saved my ass, I bought you a drink." He shrugged, not quite meeting her eyes. "Figure I'm a drink down at this point, and I didn't even know. So I might as well do something about that."

He held up the glass; Peggy raised hers and clinked them together. "To those who didn't make it back," she said.

Jack met her eyes this time, his faint smile wistful and a little sad. "And those who did."

They drank. It was good Scotch, but she wouldn't have expected anything else.

Jack topped up his glass and offered her more; she started to shake her head, then held it out. "You know," he said as he splashed whisky into her glass, "I can't help feeling there's a whole treasure trove of SSR stories hiding in that head of yours. That time on Palau couldn't have been the only time you were running around somewhere you weren't supposed to be. Were you in the Pacific much?"

"I was primarily on European assignments. Well, I did get to fly over the Burma Hump once. That was a rather exciting time."

Jack hooked a chair with his foot and dragged it over so he could drop off the desk into a more comfortable seat. "Please tell me Stark wasn't the pilot."

"Oh no, it was a young gentleman from Texas who went by the reassuring nickname of 'Wild Bill.' There was a good deal of rain that night -- and snow, I'd almost forgotten the snow, not to speak of the wind ..."

As she spoke, the scene drifted back to her: the gale-force wind hammering the plane, her white-knuckled grip on the cargo netting that was the only thing keeping her from being flung across the plane's hold, the weight of the parachute she desperately hoped she wouldn't have to use. Strange to be talking about it now, all these miles and years away, in a pool of lamplight with the smoky taste of Scotch in her mouth and Jack, one elbow resting on her desk and his long fingers lightly tracing the rim of his whisky glass, hanging on every word.

Wars made strange allies, sometimes. Even after the war was done.


End file.
